“Ricks!” exclaimed the Englishman, “why these be they.”
“Well, then,” says Paddy, “I'll just tell ye: there's about enough hay in this stack-yard to make the bands for thatching my master's ricks. Happen” (this he added as though he wished to be liberal, and to pay his companion a compliment), “there might be a couple of yards or so to spare.”
You may imagine that when, in the following year, the English valet came with his master to return the visit at Killarney, he was not long before he requested his Irish friend to favour him with a view of the haystacks. To be sure he would, with all the pleasure in life, and sorry he was to be prevented by circumstances (over which, he might have added, he had every control) from making the inspection before evening. Accordingly, in the dusk and gloom of twilight, he took the Englishman forth, and showed him, dim in the distance, this lofty mountain range. “There are _our_ ricks,” said he.
In that belief the astonished stranger slept; and ever since that time men call these hills _Macgillicuddy s Reeks!_
Mr. Miles, in the next place, made our fingers to itch, eyes to strain, and mouths to water, as he told of red deer among the mountains, and of woodcocks in their season, twenty couple to be bagged _per diem_. Thus conversing, we drew near to _the Gap_, and to the cottage of Mrs. Moriarty, _née_ Kearney, and grand-daughter of the beautiful Kate. But it is by no means a case of
and we did not hesitate to decline the proffered draught of goat's milk and whiskey, although we implicitly believed Mrs. M.'s assertion, that, if we drank it, we should want nothing more throughout the remainder of the day.
Here, too, we overtook a car from _Tralee_, laden with pretty girls and a few young men (how we hated the latter for being in such high spirits, thought them vulgar snobs when they laughed, and coarsely familiar whenever they spoke!)--not from any rapidity of pace on our part, but because the Tralee horses judiciously jibbed at anything like a rise in the road; and then off jumped the pretty girls, like doves from eave to earth, but being, in their peculiar grace and pleasant coo, immeasurably superior to pigeons.
At the entrance to _the Gap_, the scene was a most lively and attractive one. Here the cars are sent back, as the journey through the Pass must be made on ponies or afoot, and there was quite a merry little congress of visitors, guides, cars, and steeds. At length, the procession started, and a very picturesque one,--_voici!_